Boulder police, Sheriff's Office meet on 2 cases

By Mitchell Byars, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
04/09/2014 10:18:26 AM MDT

Updated:
04/09/2014 08:21:07 PM MDT

Zachary Meints appears at the Boulder County Jail for a hearing Dec. 13, 2011.

Boulder police and sheriff's investigators met Wednesday to discuss the two reported stabbings of sex offender Zachary Meints, with Sheriff Joe Pelle acknowledging that detectives are looking into "all possibilities" — including whether the wounds were self-inflicted or Meints is being targeted over his past sex offense.

Boulder police spokeswoman Laurie Ogden confirmed Wednesday that Meints has been released from the hospital after he reported being stabbed Tuesday night for the second time in as many weeks.

According to a police news release issued Tuesday night, Meints told investigators that he was walking in the 2100 block of Pine Street just before 3 p.m. Tuesday when he was attacked and stabbed by an unknown man carrying a folding knife.

Meints suffered a non-serious wound to his abdomen and drove himself to an emergency room for treatment, police said.

Meints told investigators he tried to use pepper spray on the suspect but believed he missed. The suspect fled on foot to the east, and police have not located him, according to the release.

On March 31, Meints reported that a masked assailant stabbed him twice in the back outside his home at 679 Snowpeak Lane in unincorporated Boulder County. His injuries were reported as serious but not life-threatening.

No one has been arrested in connection with either stabbing, and both Ogden and Pelle said there were no updates in the cases.

Pelle said the two agencies would meet to discuss the stabbings. When asked if it was possible Meints was targeted because of his sex offender status or whether it was possible Meints stabbed himself, Pelle said detectives will examine every scenario.

"We have to look into all those possibilities and ask all those questions," Pelle said. "The mistake would be to lock in to any one theory right now."

Meints, who was fired from his coaching position with the Rocky Mountain RoughRiders 15-and-under hockey team after an investigation was opened in September 2011, pleaded guilty in May 2012 to one count of Internet sexual exploitation.

He was sentenced in 2012 to 10 years of sex offender intensive supervised probation, which includes close monitoring of his personal relationships and regular polygraph tests to ensure he is not acting in a hypersexual way.

He is required to register as a sex offender for 10 years beyond when his probation is completed.

Sheriff's officials did say Meints had been the target of a recent threat and that his house — where he lives with his parents — was burglarized a week before the first stabbing.

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